Michael Bazzett
                           was the miniature
bears that became so fashionable
were prone to hip dysplasia
    so those who had been
        unable to resist
owning a grizzly the size of a house
    cat were forced to watch
            the animals
slowly lose the function of their back legs
    and drag their limbs behind them
    in an uncanny echo
            of a miniature sea lion.
What made it worse
                        was how good-
natured the little bears turned out to be,
    how accepting
        of their fate, as if they'd knon
their legs would last only a short while,
like the anticipatory grins
    of those waiting in line for the tilt-a-whirl
        at the county fair. People
used to post photos of the bears
    holding plums between their forepaws,
          tucking into the fruit
like a melon. A man in Seattle
    thought it would be funny
             to film his
          wrestling with a salmon
but when the silver jaws
                   gripped
onto the tiny furred limb and they both
          flipped-into the stream
it went viral for the wrong reasons
    and the look on the man's face
       as he dragged the sodden hulk
of what looked like a strangely delicate
       woodchuck from the water

told us everything we needed to know. 
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RARE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY POETRY MANUSCRIPT AT RISK OF EXPORT
 
"An incredibly rare Stuart manuscript of works by the poet John Donne is at risk of leaving the UK unless a buyer can be found to match the £466,000 asking price." 

via UNITED KINGDOM GOVERNMENT 
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Vivek Narayanan's handwritten copy and translation of "The Three Birds"


"When, at the age of 15, I was touched again by Gray’s 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' it actually frightened me, as if I were being called by ghosts and ancestors down an unwise path. I gingerly started getting into some of the Americans and the moderns but it seemed almost obvious that people like me didn’t become poets."
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